The Biden administration has proposed regulating bank overdraft fees, which are charges banks levy on account holders when their account balances fall below zero. I’m rarely a supporter of government regulation, but in this case, the idea has merit.
Exactly two decades ago, Alvaro Vargas Llosa published Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression. This work invited us to reflect on why attempts to generate prosperity in this region of the world, whether through socialism, populism, and nationalism, as well as the nascent capitalism of the 1990s, repeatedly foundered.
The U.S. government is off to a bad start for its 2024 fiscal year. Data published by the U.S. Treasury Department for the first three months of FY 2024 indicates the federal government’s spending is increasing considerably faster than its revenue.
Despite much hand-wringing by California politicians over the housing crisis, residential building permits statewide were lower in 2019 than in 2018, according to the most recent figures from the California Department of Finance. To reverse this beyond-discouraging trend, California should look to 1906 San Francisco.
It’s typical of the progressive cast of our culture to focus on the forward-looking at the expense of the traditional—or, if you prefer, to miss the traditional elements that lie at the heart of a genuinely progressive movement. So it is that in celebrating the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr., his connection to the thread of the Western moral and philosophical tradition is often neglected.
My vote for entrepreneur of 2023? Taylor Swift. No more proof is needed than her concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (released October 13, 2023).
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have struck a deal. The deal covers discretionary spending, the portion of the U.S. government’s budget that the U.S. Congress approves each year. Discretionary spending includes items like defense spending, welfare, and federal government operations. For the 2024 fiscal year, the U.S. government will spend $1.59 trillion. Of that, $886 billion will go for defense-related spending, while $704 billion will go for non-defense-related spending.
The world lost one of its most effective academic champions of freedom and free markets when Jim Gwartney passed away on January 7. Jim rarely wrote for popular audiences, so people unfamiliar with his academic work may not realize the influence he has had. Even those familiar with his academic work may not realize the extent of his influence.
Just before the start of 2024, the US Federal debt surpassed a new milestone: $34 trillion. In 2023 the US added $2.65 trillion in debt, the second largest annual increase in history after the 2020 increase of $4.5 trillion. Going back to 1995, Federal Debt has increased by just over $1 trillion per year, but since 2010 that number has jumped to $1.7 trillion annually.
In their recent debate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom were at odds over the exodus of people from their respective states. Katy Grimes of the California Globe went to a different source for the data.
